The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
When constructing any new building, there is a tremendous amount of architectural and engineering work that must be performed to ensure the building meets applicable safety standards and industry requirements. With particular regard to multi-story steel buildings, such as those utilized in the storage industry, engineers design the structure utilizing a plurality of vertical support columns each having different lengths, widths and load bearing capacities.
Upon approval of the building design, a factory must construct a multitude of different shaped and sized columns, which then must be delivered to the building construction site in the particular order in which they are to be used. Finally, each individual column must be placed at the specified location within the building and welded on-site. One example of the current state of the art includes U.S. Patent publication no. 2006/0010825, to Schubert.
Unfortunately, this process of design, delivery and construction results in most of these storage unit steel buildings taking several months to design and complete. Additionally, because each column must be welded on-site, and then inspected, there is a tremendous amount of costs associated with skilled labor that adds to the overall cost of the building. Moreover, because the columns are designed for use at particular locations within the building, it is not uncommon for some of the columns to be left sitting at the construction site for days or weeks until being installed.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a building system wherein each of the vertical columns comprise substantially identical shapes and sizes, and that do not need to be welded on-site so as to eliminate each of the drawbacks described above.